


a shadow and a smile

by ninemoons42



Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Accidents, Alternate Universe - Human, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - No Powers, Alternate Universe - Writing & Publishing, First Kiss, First Meetings, Gen, Making Friends, Motorcycle Accidents, Motorcycles, Past Abuse, meet cute
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-14
Updated: 2013-07-14
Packaged: 2017-12-20 04:46:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,943
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/883110
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ninemoons42/pseuds/ninemoons42
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Charles Xavier retreats to a mountaintop town so he can write his next novel, but the first  day there leaves him with little time for literary work, because he's too busy meeting people: good people, kind people, and Erik Lehnsherr.</p>
            </blockquote>





	a shadow and a smile

**Author's Note:**

  * For [afrocurl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/afrocurl/gifts).



“Laundry every three days, you can use the kitchen downstairs but you’ll have to pay extra if you forget to clean up after yourself,” the kid with the carabiner on his belt says as he more or less clanks his way back down the stairs.

Charles blinks, and gives up on estimating the number of keys that the boy had been carrying around with him, and he pushes the door marked with a white 2 open.

“Small room is small,” he thinks out loud, mostly amused. There’s just enough space inside for a bed and a desk and a truly dinky closet; at least the beddings look warm and almost inviting, and at least he does get the window and the view that he was promised when he booked the place. 

Charles wheels his two bags in and deposits his backpack next to the closet; after he closes the door and locks it he gets onto the bed and pulls the two sets of curtains aside. The window is already unlatched and partway open.

The sky is a glorious deep blue, spackled here and there with fluffy white dashes of cloud, unimaginably high up. Trees reaching up for those clouds, the rich scent of pine trees, a dozen shades of green on the ground below: glossy and matte and edged in brilliant purple, with wild flowers here and there, unfurling flags of shocking color.

He has to tell himself that he can get back to admiring the view once he’s set up; still, he drags his feet a little as he starts to unpack. Three of his favorite jumpers, still warm and toasty even though they’re starting to unravel at sleeve and elbow and collar. Extra pairs of socks in case it gets even cooler than it already is now. Toiletries and a small stash of chocolate bars and the teacup that he’s been carrying around with him for years. 

He smiles and runs a finger thoughtfully around the rim, mindful of the places where he hadn’t exactly been precise in gluing the thing back together: it’s a wonder it can still hold water, let alone hot tea, or the occasional shot of whiskey. It goes everywhere he goes and it is always the first thing he places on his writing table.

With the teacup in place on the desk, he can start working on unraveling the tangle of wires for his laptop and his headphones and his mini-cassette tape recorder.

The breeze picks up after a few minutes and Charles is very grateful that he hadn’t bothered to take off his heavy coat when he entered the house. 

He takes the opportunity to check the weather forecasts for the next few days; rain might be nice now that he’s here in the mountains, but he’ll have to see about getting an umbrella, if he decides to venture out for a change of pace or, of course, actual food.

His phone beeps at him to indicate an incoming text message, which he reads softly to himself, a smile playing around his mouth: “Dear Charles, now that I know that you didn’t get lost [again] I think I can breathe a little more easily. Please don’t forget to eat. Best of luck on your book, and I’ll see you when I see you. ♥ from Raven [Irene says hi and we’ll send you something when we get to Geneva]”

“Thank you, dearest,” he murmurs.

*

He’s perhaps fifteen pages into his draft when his stomach starts rumbling unhappily at him.

Night has fallen while he was writing, and his ankle itches like fury, and the world outside the window is shadowy and quiet.

Even though Charles knows that he has an Emma to edit the completed manuscript and a Janos to research the things he’s not entirely familiar with, he still looks over the pages he’s already got, hoping to catch any too-glaring errors.

The problem is, his eyes are starting to cross from hunger.

Reluctantly, he saves and resaves the draft and then powers the laptop down, and he looks around for his boots and reties the laces with shaking hands.

He sticks his recorder and his mobile phone into his pockets, and he pulls on a battered hat that Raven had knitted for him several years ago.

There’s no one here on this floor with him; he’d asked when he booked the room, and he’d asked again when he arrived. He’d still have come here even if the other rooms had been occupied, but now he takes a moment to check that he’s locked the door, and another to just appreciate the austere emptiness of the place. A short corridor of locked doors, numbered from 1 through 5; the sixth door is for the toilet and bathroom. Wooden planks beneath his shoes. Walls painted white with a darker gray stripe near the ceiling. 

The steps creak beneath his feet as he makes his way down to the first floor - and then he has to start climbing up the path so he can get to street level and thence to town.

Charles hails a cab, and the driver is a woman, and the first thing he asks her as he clambers into the shotgun seat is, “Where do you eat?”

“Are you asking me specifically,” she replies, “or is that more of an existential question?”

He laughs. “I’d love for it to be the latter, but the thing is, I haven’t eaten in about six hours and - ”

She guns the engine, then, and she’s laughing when she says, “Well, settle in, it’ll take me about twenty-five minutes to drive you there but I promise the food’s worth the wait at Armando’s, I’m telling you, he makes the best stew ever.”

“Well, with a recommendation like that,” Charles says, laughing as they swing down a steep series of hairpin turns, “how could I refuse?”

“You really shouldn’t.”

He learns that the girl is named Angel and that Armando isn’t the only good cook at the place that they’re headed for. Moira’s the only one who can coax the temperamental espresso machine into doing exactly what she wants of it, and she comes up with the most amazing coffee and tea drinks. Alex is trying and failing to be vegan, and makes both the bread and the desserts. Sean juggles plates in between frenzied rounds of busing tables.

By the time Angel pulls one more screaming right turn into the parking lot and turns off the engine with a jubilant whisper of a curse, Charles is cold and windburned and hungry but he’s sure he’s never laughed harder in his life.

He’s still smiling even after an alarmingly tall man with stubble creeping up his beautifully chiseled jaw nearly runs him down at the door; Charles simply steps aside and never gives him a second glance, and keeps listening to Angel’s cheerful banter.

“Okay, everyone, meet Charles, and before you say hello to him can someone please get him something to eat because the poor deprived soul has been too busy doing - what is it that you do exactly,” she says as she marches Charles up to a table.

“I’m a writer,” Charles says, and he laughs, a little self-consciously, when the redhead with the mop stops right next to him and stares. “Yes, do I have something on my face?”

“What is it that you write exactly?” the man wiping down the counter asks. He has a brilliant smile, welcoming and warm. “You should come to one of our book nights some time. Although maybe you shouldn’t be sober, because it can get, I don’t know, weird in here.”

“I am all for weird book nights,” Charles says. “And I don’t know if you might have heard about some of the things I’ve written. Most of the time I write detective stories, noir, sometimes the protagonists are not straight - ”

There’s a screech in the kitchen, Angel bursts out laughing, and the redhead whips out his mobile phone and takes a photo of Charles, startled expression and all. “I think I know who you are, dude. And I wouldn’t be the only one. You’re Charles Xavier, aren’t you?”

“How do you know - ”

“Moira,” everyone else in the restaurant says.

And as if on cue the door into the restaurant slams open, and the woman in the orange fleece jacket strides over with an armful of battered paperbacks. “I promise I’ll let you eat and I promise I’ll make you the best coffee or tea you’ve ever had but can you please sign my books?” she says, all in one breath.

“Of course,” Charles says with a laugh. “Who do I sign them to?”

“I’m Moira,” the woman says. “Moira MacTaggert.”

Charles nods, and pats his pockets down for a pen, and the redhead hands him a blue one with a chewed end. “Sorry about that. Nervous habit.”

“I’m familiar with that,” Charles laughs, and he starts scribbling.

“Feed him up,” Angel says. “Seriously. You want him to produce, you gotta make sure he eats.”

“I know, I know,” the man at the counter says. “You okay with not ordering, Mister Xavier?”

“Please don’t call me that, you’re making me feel old,” Charles scolds without looking up from Moira’s dog-eared books. “And I like surprises. Please feel free to do your worst in the kitchen.”

“You got it. Name’s Armando, by the way, and the redhead reading over your shoulder is Sean. I’ll go talk to Alex, see if we can’t heat up some of the sourdough for you.”

“Thank you so very much,” Charles says, and he watches Armando throw a jaunty wave over his shoulder. 

Chicken and dumplings and toasted bread, and a cup of excellent coffee. Angel insists on ordering him dessert and Charles stops protesting when Alex serves him a slice of pie, custardy and rich and dotted with chopped almonds. “You are all geniuses,” he proclaims when Armando brings him his bill. 

“Hey, it’s not every day we get someone famous in here,” is Armando’s reply.

Charles rolls his eyes when Sean waves everyone to the table for a photograph, but he knows he’s smiling until the muscles in his face begin to ache.

“How long will you be staying here to write anyway?” Angel asks as she toys with her third cup of coffee.

Charles shrugs and pours a little more cream into his cup. “It depends on the story, really. I had fifteen pages done before I came up for air, though I don’t know if they’ll still be good in the morning. We’ll all find out together, I guess.”

“What will it take,” Moira asks, “for you to put us into the book?”

“Are you sure you want him to do that?” Alex snarks without looking up from his mobile phone. There’s still a fine layer of flour on his arms and hands. “He said so himself. Crime novels. You just asked him to kill you or something.”

“Thanks for the idea,” Charles says, grinning wryly. “Buried alive in coffee beans, maybe.”

“As long as they were good coffee beans,” Moira says, wadding up her apron and launching it at Alex’s head.

“Okay, okay, I should go,” Charles says. “It’s been a very long day, but it’s been a very interesting one, too, thanks to all of you. Should I come here for breakfast?”

“We open after eight,” Armando says. “Come on down if you like leftovers.” 

“I love leftovers.” 

“I like you a hell of a lot,” Sean says.

Charles submits to a fist-bump from the redhead. “Thank you very much.” 

“I’ll run you back over,” Angel says as she retrieves her jacket. “You just wait and I’ll get my cab warmed up, okay?”

“Okay.”

The night is crisp and cool and gloriously clear; when he looks up at the stars Charles gasps softly and puts his arms around himself and keeps staring. He can’t remember the last time he saw the Milky Way properly.

“Yeah, it’s a sight, isn’t it?” Angel asks when she pulls up next to him. “It’s not something you’d be able to see in a city, that’s for sure.”

“And I like living in cities,” Charles says. “But this is a substantial inducement to move, were I ever so inclined. As is the food at Armando’s.”

“That goes without saying. You ready to go?”

“Yes, please.”

Just as he’s about to open the door, however, there’s a scream, and the unmistakable screech of stressed brakes, and a thump that travels up his feet and jars his nerves.

Charles looks at Angel; she looks back, and then she waves him in, and they’re rocketing forward even as she’s hitting a speed-dial button on her mobile phone. “Moira? Yeah, we’re okay, Charles is okay, but I think there’s been an accident. Call 911 and then send the boys out, we’re heading down the hill.”

“Got it,” is Moira’s reply, tinny and clearly determined. “You two be safe.”

“For a given definition of safe,” Charles says, and then: “Of all the times to be without a kit - ”

“You travel around with one?” Angel asks.

“Normally, yes,” Charles says. “I left it in the room, though. It’s good that you asked Moira to call emergency services. I can help, but there’s only so much I can do.”

“I’ve had first responder training, and there’s a kit in the trunk. It’s kinda required for the license around here.” 

“That’s a good thing. I’ve also received that training. Let us hope that you and I will be sufficient, at least until EMS shows up,” Charles says.

They come upon the scene of the accident as soon as she turns the corner that leads down the slope; there’s a motorcycle lying dead center on the road, its front wheel spinning slowly and drunkenly.

“Find the rider,” Angel says, and Charles curses when he misses the latch on his seat belt. It opens on the second try, and he hurries toward the fallen bike and begins to pace out a wide circle. Over and over he calls, “If you can hear us, we’re here to help.”

“Here,” says a voice several meters to his left.

He hurries past the broken guardrail. Once he’s off the road the ground turns rough and stony underfoot. Trees cluster close to the shoulder, and there’s a heap of leathers and retroreflective stripes near one of the roots. 

“Help me get up,” says a man’s voice.

“Not a good idea, we can’t move you until we know you’re not actually injured,” Charles says. “We’ve already called EMS, they should be here in a tick.”

“There’re stones digging into my ribs.”

“Just hold on a little longer.” 

“At least can you help me get my helmet off?”

Charles tuts, and then nods, though he’s not sure the rider can see him. He approaches very cautiously.

“Careful,” the man says, “there’s a hell of a drop about ten inches to your left.”

Charles looks, and the ground falls away, and he can’t see where the drop ends. “You are a very lucky man, whoever you are,” he says, trying to sound calm.

“Maybe.”

Charles gets down on his knees next to the fallen rider. There is just enough starlight to make out the buckle for the helmet’s chin strap; it clicks open, loud in the hush.

He takes off his coat and folds it into a large, puffy square, and he slides it beneath the man’s head before taking the helmet off.

“I know you,” the man says after a moment.

“I’m sorry?” Charles asks, bewildered.

“Smile,” the man says.

“- What?” Before Charles can open his mouth to ask more questions, the wail of a siren slashes through the night.

“Charles?” Angel calls. “The others are here, and that’s the ambulance, where are you?”

“Over here,” he shouts back. To the man, he adds, “Did you have a passenger? Should we be looking for the other rider?”

“No, it’s just me. Smile,” the man says again.

“I - this is hardly the time - ” But Charles gives in, eventually, and he forces a grin onto his face.

“I saw you go into the restaurant up the hill,” the man says. “You were laughing. I remembered your smile. I was rude to you and you weren’t rude back.”

Charles blinks, and rifles through his memories, and - “Oh, that was you!” If he squints, now, he can make out the jawline, as well as a few other features that he hadn’t noticed. The man has a scar over his mouth and another cutting through his left eyebrow.

“I should apologize,” the man says. “I just about ran right into you.”

“You’ll do no such thing,” Charles says. “No harm done.”

Before the man can reply, someone shouts “Over here!” and then they’re surrounded. 

Silently, Charles hands the man’s helmet over to one of the paramedics. 

“Oh, thanks,” the woman says. Deft hands extract the tag from the neon yellow sleeve on the exterior. “Erik Lehnsherr?” she asks the man in the leathers. “Blood type A+, no listed allergies or medications?”

“Yes,” Erik Lehnsherr says.

“No listed numbers either,” the woman says, sounding disapproving.

“I currently don’t have any next of kin.”

“Then who do we notify about your condition - ”

Charles steps forward. “That would be me, I think,” he says. 

Even in the night he can see her eyes narrowing. “And you are?”

“Charles Xavier. I know this man.”

“This is not standard procedure at all,” the woman says. “But. All right. We need to get Mr Lehnsherr to the hospital immediately. Can you give me your contact information? Where can we reach you in case something happens?”

Even as he submits to her questions, he finds himself looking again and again at Erik as he’s loaded into the back of the ambulance. Worry flutters beneath his ribcage, all the fiercer because it’s completely unexpected.

“Do you want to ride in with him, or will you go to the hospital later - ”

Charles says, “I’ll see him later, I think. I need to get a few things from the place where I’m staying.”

“All right,” the woman says. “We’ll notify you if there’s any change in his condition.”

“Yes please.” Then he walks over to the ambulance and gets in. Erik turns his head easily to look at him. “I’ll see you later at the hospital, all right?”

“Okay. I’m Erik.”

“I know. And I’m Charles.”

“I know. See you.”

*

There are many inconveniences to writing in the hospital. Charles knows this from personal experience; there’s a reason why the first two books he ever wrote were set in and around operating rooms and ICUs. He certainly doesn’t miss the constant numbing cold, nor the sharp stink of antiseptic, nor the squeak of shoes on anti-slip tile.

He concentrates on everything else instead. The weight of the laptop on his knees. The clicking din he strikes up as his fingers fly over the keyboard. There’s no Internet access in this waiting room, so he’s free to concentrate on the rhythm and the flow of his words. The radiator next to him wheezes and coughs from time to time, as though it, too, were a patient in need of attention.

“Mister Xavier,” someone says, and he holds up a hand, finishes the sentence but not the paragraph, before looking up.

“Sorry about that, I had to write it down before I lost the thought,” he says to the man in the green scrubs. “How is Erik?”

“He’ll be all right in a few days,” the doctor says. “A couple of fairly deep lacerations to the left leg, and a partial fracture of the right arm. We’ll observe him here for two days, three at the most.”

“He’s going to ask me,” Charles says as his mind churns through the implications, “when he’ll be able to ride again.”

The doctor chuckles. “I imagine he might. We’re going to tell him this, of course, impress on him the gravity of the situation, but if he does ask you, tell him he’s to stay off the roads for at least a month if he knows what’s good for him.”

“Ouch.” Charles winces in sympathy. “Can I go and see him now?”

“Yes, though when I left him he was still sleeping.”

“That’s all right. I can write some more if he’s not yet awake.”

“Follow me,” the doctor says.

But Charles lays his laptop aside when he goes in, and he spends several seconds looking at the man in the bed.

Here is Erik Lehnsherr, sleeping. He still has Charles’s coat; someone has draped it over him for an extra blanket. There is something unnatural about the slackness in his face; he hadn’t looked like that during their brief conversation on the road.

Charles chalks it up to the remaining anaesthesia and keeps observing him. Sparsely freckled forearms. Knobby knees. Dark hair cropped short and graying just a little at the temples. Erik doesn’t seem that old, though - Charles reaches for the patient identification bracelet and raises his eyebrows when he notes Erik’s age. They’re only about a year or so apart. Erik looks a little older.

A soft groan, a full-body shiver. 

“Still cold?” Charles asks as he watches Erik blink himself awake. “Even with my coat?”

“I don’t like hospitals,” is the slightly garbled reply. “There’s always something wrong with the climate control.”

“I agree,” Charles says. And then: “How do you feel?”

“Like I’ve been kicked off a mountain and asked to come back up.”

“How unnecessarily vivid,” and Charles wrinkles his nose. “But if you can talk like that I guess I don’t have to worry about you that much.”

“You’re worried about me why?”

Charles shrugs.

“Smile, please,” Erik says after a moment.

“I really don’t know what there is to smile about. You’re in hospital and you won’t be able to ride for at least a month. I’m in a place that calls bad memories to mind. At least I can beat off the ghosts by writing; I already know I can write in places like these. You, well, your prognosis is good but you’re kind of stuck, if you get my drift.”

“It doesn’t bother me. This is hardly my first accident. I can tell you for certain I’ve lived through much, much worse than this,” Erik says, and there is a dark vehemence that lingers in the corners of his eyes for just a moment.

Charles blinks, and doesn’t press the point, and contents himself with saying, “Be that as it may.”

There’s a knock on the door, and a nurse comes in. “Here are your things, Mister Lehnsherr,” he says, depositing a heap of leathers on the room’s other chair.

“Can you hand me my mobile phone?” Erik asks after the nurse has checked his vitals and then bustled out.

There’s an e-book reader app on the screen. “I hope you’ve new books to read,” Charles murmurs as he hands the device over.

“I can always buy some more.”

“Please yourself,” Charles says as he retrieves his laptop.

He can hear Erik swearing softly under his breath and he looks up after the third time, but the only problem seems to be Erik trying to use his phone with his left hand, so he goes back to his draft and gets lost, again, in the clack of his keyboard.

“Charles,” Erik says, after a while.

“Yes?” he replies without looking up. “Are you going to ask me to smile?”

“Yes.”

He saves the draft and puts the laptop away again. “May I ask why?” 

Erik shrugs at him, one-shouldered and careful and accompanied by a wince anyway. “Because that’s how I saw you first. Because your smile was unexpected. I’d - I’ve never seen anyone smile like you do.”

Charles blinks at him, surprised. “Funny, that’s the exact opposite of what people say when I have to go out in public.”

Erik tilts his head a little to the left, consideringly. “What do people say about you when you have to go out in public?”

“That my smile is too practiced. That it’s clearly a rehearsed smile. That it’s a smile that’s impossible to read. Maybe they’re right, sometimes,” Charles concedes, shrugging. “I don’t really have any experience with being a private citizen as opposed to a public figure.”

“You’re someone famous?” Erik asks, looking a little poleaxed.

“After a fashion, yes, I suppose I am,” Charles says. “I write novels, and there is a group of people who happen to like the novels I write, and I guess my editors and publishers think I have to drum up more sales? Anyway, I have to go on tour from time to time, and usually it’s fantastic. I get to go to bookstores and meet people who read all kinds of things. People feed me interesting things and buy me drinks. And since I’m not really as popular as people like Gaiman and Duane and Lynch and Valente, when I sign books for people the lines seem - I suppose they seem more reasonable than most.”

When he finishes there is a distinctly amused light in Erik’s eyes. “So it’s a hard life, is it?”

“It is,” Charles says, and he knows he’s gone quiet and somber, “when people don’t want to talk about the things I do, because they want to talk about the things that other people did. To me. I’ve asked people to leave my past alone, I’ve asked till I’ve gone hoarse, and still they ask me the same questions. Did I learn how to smile from my alcoholic mother or from my suicidal father? Do I still have the scars from when that great idiot who called himself my stepfather beat me, over and over again?”

The smile has dropped off Erik’s face. He’s pale, now, and shocked.

Charles offers him a lopsided smirk in apology. “It was a hard life. I won’t gloss over it. But it’s all in the past, and I would rather concentrate on the life that I have now. I’d rather my stories were the story instead of me. I suppose I could keep trying.”

“And that’s why you think it’s strange that I ask you to smile,” Erik says. “I have to admit, that was not exactly what I was expecting.”

“Are you going to stop asking?”

“No.”

Charles shakes his head and laughs softly. “Why am I not surprised.”

“Smile,” Erik says, and Charles is not sure if he’s imagining that there’s a pleading note in that rough voice.

“Maybe I will,” Charles murmurs, “on one condition?”

“What?”

“Would you smile, too? For me?”

The poleaxed expression returns to Erik’s face, but only for a moment. It melts away, to be followed by a frown that pulls all of the lines and seams in his face briefly together. A serious cast to his words: “Come here.”

Charles shoots him a surprised look, but goes to sit on the bed, sideways on to him, careful to avoid jostling the cast and the stitches.

“Closer,” Erik says.

“How much closer? Like this?” Charles scoots closer, carefully, though he has to move the IV tubes out of the way.

“Close enough,” Erik says.

He mutters something to himself, and Charles can’t help but lean in a little more, listening to the words that sound a little like “Craziest thing I’ve ever done.”

“What?” Charles asks, and starts turning his head.

Out of the corner of his eye, he can see Erik coming closer, looking determined.

Something warm and a little rough touches his cheek, just below his eye.

Erik pulls back, and then, suddenly, like the sun and the stars showing up in the sky at the same time, he smiles: Charles thinks of teeth, briefly, and then he can’t see Erik’s scars for the brightness in his eyes, the strangely powerful warmth of him.

Charles can’t help but touch his cheek, as though he’d like to press that fleeting touch in, make it linger on his skin. “Did you just - ”

“I did,” Erik says, still grinning, unrepentant.

“You think that’s crazy?”

“It’s still crazier than wiping out on a steep slope - that’s nearly normal on a motorbike, don’t you think?”

“I - well, now that you mention it, yes,” Charles says - and then he can’t help the laugh that wraps warmly around his heart, and he gives in to it.

“That’s it, that’s the smile I was talking about,” Erik says, and he doesn’t sound smug at all. If anything, he sounds surprised, and there is something very much like wonder winding into those words.

Charles knows little to nothing about this man that he has just met, and cannot say if he’s hearing happiness in that rough reverent voice, but he can respond to those words, in deed if not in thought: so he smiles and beckons Erik closer. 

There are faint lines like worry and pain lingering in the corner of Erik’s left eye, and Charles smoothes a kiss over the wayward twitch, and says, “Get some rest. I’ll see you soon.”

By the time Erik replies, Charles has squared his computer away, is on his feet and almost out the door. “Is that a promise?”

Charles laughs a little more, soft and pleased. “It’d be rude to say something like that and not actually do it, wouldn’t you say so?”

The lightbulb comes on almost immediately - he can see it in Erik’s easy grin. “And you wouldn’t be rude to me. All right, Charles. Good night.”

“Good night, Erik,” Charles says, and he smiles at him, once more.

**the beginning**

**Author's Note:**

> I did this prompt last time and am laughing that I did it again, but luckily my recipient does not mind, so :D
> 
> Based somewhat on a recent trip that I took myself, only sans the motorbike crash.


End file.
